A new clutch of novels and film-TV dramas about the Templars is unlikely to overshadow the ongoing nonfiction explorations of the subject.
Raymond Khoury's The Last Templar cover
The Templars seem to have finally made it to prime-time television. The NBC network TV miniseries The Last Templar, starring Mira Sorvino, is an adaptation of a 2005 novel by Spooks screenwriter Raymond Khoury’ “about a New York archaeologist researching the lost secrets of the medieval Knights Templar” (I’m going to quote official synopses throughout this lest anyone thinks I’m caricaturing these unlikely-sounding storylines.) There is also Paul Sampson’s upcoming horror-thriller (which sounds made for TV) Night Of The Templar, in which “a Medieval Knight resurrects to fulfil his vow and bestow a blood-thirst vengeance upon the kindred spirits of those who betrayed him long ago”. Last week, here in Britain, the BBC’s new big-budget archaeological-adventure-drama series, sassily titled Bonekickers, kicked off with a plot about the finding of a relic related to the Templars stirring up contemporary religious hatreds. As a newspaper reviewer put it, “On the screen there’s a couple of thugs, wearing T-shirts with an ancient Knights Templar emblem, using medieval swords to attack Muslims.”
Scandinavia, which has a speculated Templar connection in the Baltic Isle of Bornholm, with its round churches, promoted by Henry Lincoln of Holy Blood, Holy Grail fame as “The Templars’ Secret Island” , is ahead of the US, having made several TV-financed film productions now out on DVD here. The trilogy Tempelriddernes Skat (I,II,III) aka The Lost Treasure Of The Knights Templar, partly filmed on Bornholm, is described as a family-oriented adventure version of The Da Vinci Code, with a trio of kids helping the Templars recover artefacts. The more adult Arn – Tempelriddaren (2007) aka Arn – The Knight Templar, “Scandinavia’s most expensive film production ever,” is a mediaeval-era novel-adaptation financed by Sweden’s 2 main TV channels, intended as a TV series pilot. And I suspect Indiana Jones would have encountered the Templars in his latest adventure [see my previous S-T-F blog item], out last month, if he hadn’t already encountered the very last Knight Templar in his previous adventure (the centuries-old Grail Knight in the cave).
In The Da Vinci Code and subsequent works, the Templars are no longer the villains they usually are on screen. This seems to have begun with the trio of dastardly Norman KTs who kidnap Rebecca in Sir Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe, and continued with the bone-headed fundamentalist troublemakers of Ridley Scott’s Crusades drama Kingdom Of Heaven. Their most positive screen appearance seems to have been an anonymous walk-on part – or rather, ride-up part, as Crusaders wearing red crosses of St George on their white surplices (sleeveless vests worn over armour). This was when a phalanx of them would sweep in on horseback, lances and pennants aloft, riding behind King Richard just back from Crusade – arriving in the nick of time to save Ivanhoe, or Robin Hood and Maid Marian from injustice at the hands of cruel King John. The reality differs from the Hollywood image of course, and even in the original Scott novel Ivanhoe, it ends with Richard banishing all Templars from England and seizing their estates over their abuses of power and treachery. (In reality, Richard spent only a few months of his reign in England, dying abroad much as depicted in the 1975 Richard Lester film Robin And Marian. The banning of the English Templars was done much later, by Edward II, at the behest of the Pope.) In 2010, we will have Russian producer-director Timur Bekmambetov’s project for Universal Studios, The Knights Templar, which according to The Hollywood Reporter, ‘revolves around the Knights Templar, who fresh from the Crusades fend off an invading vampire army seeking to destroy the Holy Grail.’ Of course, ‘fresh from the Crusades’ may suggest a certain lack of historical sense here, since the Crusades destroyed the health of so many who went, but a KT-the-vampire-slayer role is typical of how the Templars are becoming an all-purpose device to plug gaps in historical knowledge and a deus ex machina force to tackle evil. As a producer I met would put it, “Well, in 1199, who else you gonna call?”
Novels
Templar novels are also appearing, either set during the Crusades, or contemporary-set, but with narrated flashbacks to key moments in the heyday of the Templars, illustrating the ‘back story’ in the manner of The Da Vinci Code. An example of the former is Paul Doherty’s The Templar, a 384-page historical novel of crusading (set in 1095, which is technically pre-KT). Just out from Headline (April 2008), this is parenthetically listed on Amazon as “Templars 1”, indicating this is the first instalment of a series. Some of this seems to be an extension of the historical-murder-mystery genre which takes the “cloak-and-dagger” mystery back to its metaphoric roots. This is where mediaeval monks or Roman tribunes solve a murder-coverup amidst a welter of no-doubt well-researched period details. For example, Maureen Ash’s “Templar Knight Mysteries” series is already at volume #2 with Death Of A Squire, with #3 announced (the upcoming A Plague Of Poison). The synopsis for #1, The Alehouse Murders, indicates the framework:
‘A knight from the Templar Order, back in England after eight years of captivity in the Holy Land. Weary in both body and soul, Bascot de Marins injuries have affected his body quite badly but not his fertile mind and as he seeks to regain his strength and well-being while on a stay at the castle in Lincoln, he is on the look-out for something to exercise a mind that has lain fallow, during his long years of captivity. Soon, while Bascot de Marins is trying to renew his faith in God, there is an event that will do just that. Man’s inhumanity to man is never very far away in medieval England and what at first seems nothing more than a brutal end to a drunken row soon turns out to be something far more baffling. Just the thing for a convalescing Templar Knight to get his teeth into….’
The longest-running series carrying the Templar label must be Michael Jecks’s “Knights Templar Mystery” series. This series of around 24 novels, which began over ten years ago, is not primarily about the Templar order, being set post-1307 (=post-KT downfall). The hero is an ex-Templar based in the West Country who is appointed a “Keeper of the King’s Peace” and so gets involved in the political intrigues of the era (synopses here). The novels seem to feature the same pair of regular characters: The Last Templar (1995), The Leper’s Return (1989), Squire Throwleigh’s Heir (1999), The Tournament Of Blood (2001), The Devil’s Acolyte (2002), The Templar’s Penance (2003), The Mad Monk Of Gidleigh (2003), The Abbot’s Gibbet (2006), The Death Ship Of Dartmouth (2006), The Malice Of Unnatural Death (2007), Dispensation Of Death (2008), and the upcoming The Templar, The Queen And Her Lover (Sep 2008), The Prophecy Of Death (Oct 2008), and King Of Thieves [no pubn date].
An example of the second approach to the genre, contemporary-set with key back-story flashback sequence, is The Templar Legacy by Steve Berry:
‘Cotton Malone is enjoying his quiet new life as an antiquarian book dealer in Copenhagen, when he is unexpectedly plunged back into the cloak-and-dagger world he thought he’d left behind at the U.S. Justice Department. Cotton’s former supervisor, Stephanie Nelle, is in Europe on a personal mission: armed with vital clues to a series of centuries-old puzzles, she means to crack a mystery that has tantalized scholars and fortune-hunters through the ages – by finding the legendary cache of wealth and forbidden knowledge thought to be lost forever when the order of the Knights Templar was exterminated in the 14th Century. But she’s not alone. Someone else is competing for the historic prize – and they are prepared to kill to win. Cotton is soon involved in the perilous race. But the more he learns about the ancient conspiracy surrounding the Templars, the more he realizes that not only lives are at stake. At the end of a lethal game rife with intrigue, treachery and lust for power, lies a shattering discovery that could rock the civilized world – and, in the wrong hands, bring it to its knees.’
Raymond Khoury’s The Last Templar now being filmed in Canada by NBC-TV seems to combine the two settings, with a scene reminiscent of Time Bandits, where the past literally breaks through into the present: 4 mounted “Templars” storm into a NY museum gala event and make off with a mediaeval decoding device, sending “an FBI agent and a female archaeologist half way round the world in an attempt to solve a centuries old mystery, while at the same time trying to stay alive.”
Events
Outside film-TV drama and the popular novel, there are various real-world events commemorating the Templar Order in 2008. Last October was the 700th anniversary of the Knights Templar Order’s downfall at the hands of the French king, on Friday the 13th, 1307 – a fateful day in history many people seem to have found out about from reading or seeing The Da Vinci Code. This anniversary led not only to international press coverage regarding the Order’s possible continuation and resurfacing in dozens of rival guises, as neo-Templar organisations campaigning online for members. There was even a claimed “underground” branch based just outside London which demanded an apology from the Pope for the events of 700 years ago. This seems to have prompted the Vatican to release the original Papal investigation document, which had concluded the allegations against the Templars were without substance. Another self-proclaimed London-based Order [website here] announced the Knights Templar would petition the Pope to “restore the Order with the duties, rights and privileges appropriate to the 21st century and beyond” and called on all Templar “brothers in arms” to make contact. The Guardian did an investigation, but could trace the backers only as far as their accountants’ offices. I myself did a blog item last October for the “KT 700” anniversary, on this apparent attempt to gain recognition as a possible precursor to a Templar “comeback” – Knights Templar Redux?
Katherine Kurtz, author of a number of pre-Dan Brown Templar novels, said in a 2003 interview she had been a member of a Templar group in Edinburgh, in the late 1980s. She says she withdrew ‘when the wrangling among various Templar groups began to get too acrimonious and, frankly, too silly,’ referring to the ‘factional machinations that seems to occupy many of those claiming to be Templars today’ over ‘whose order is more ‘real’ than the next, and who has the most gongs, and who has jurisdiction and who does not’. (A rundown of the main rival claimant groups is included in the BBC News Magazine online article “What Are The Knights Templar Up To now?”)
London's Temple Church, with statue of mounted Templars
More established institutions have also been taking advantage of the build-up of public interest. The first to do this was probably the Templar Order’s former English HQ, Temple Church in London, between Fleet Street and the Thames Embankment, built by the Order in 1185, and now an official Church Of England establishment. Its appearance in The Da Vinci Code led to queues of visitors asking “Is this where it happened in the book?” This sudden interest initially confused the church’s vicar, the Rev Robin Griffith-Jones, known as the Master Of The Temple, but prompted him to organize an official programme of Friday talks. (I attended one of these in early 2006, which is where the photos used here of the Church’s Templar effigies come from.)
This year, Temple Church is celebrating the 400th anniversary of the granting of its Royal Charter with a year-long festival programme of music, drama, lectures, debates, and mock trials. For after the Templar Order was suppressed, the Church estate was taken over by the Knights Hospitaller alias the Knights of St John, who themselves were dispossessed by Henry VIII for being too pro-Rome. Finally, in 1608, the new Stuart king, James I, granted a Royal Charter for the site to be used as the Inns of Court now famous as the Inner Temple and the Middle Temple, inner sanctum of London’s top lawyers (Chaucer, Sir Thomas More, Thackeray, Dickens and Bram Stoker all had offices here). That entire neighbourhood of London is now known simply as Temple.
Templar effigies in Temple Church
And for anyone visiting London, the Knights Hospitaller alias the Order Of St John of Jerusalem are also opening up their mediaeval London HQ. The Hospitaller Knights of St John founded 1113 are sometimes confused with the KTs as they wore similar outfits to Templar serjeants-at-arms (who wore black rather than white), though the cross emblazoned on their tunics was different – an 8-pointed design. (Jeremy Irons in Ridley Scott’s The Crusades was a Hospitaller.) The original KH order split into several ‘Order of
Knights Hospitaller, sometimes mistaken for Templars
Saint John’ modern chivalric orders (named after their patron saint St John The Baptist). After the loss of Jerusalem, one branch fought on against Saracens, Turks, Barbary pirates etc from its island bases as the Sovereign Military Hospitaller Order Of St John Of Jerusalem Of Rhodes And Malta. ( I believe this is the order that features in the back-story of an early prototype of the priceless-artefact-to-die-for genre, The Maltese Falcon.) The Knights of Malta are now a Rome-based Catholic organisation with over 90,000 volunteers, run by a council of 60 “professed knights” and a Grand Master of proven “noble lineage”, who is elected for life.
They seem to be having their own PR image issues. Their official librarian in London told The Times [25Mr08] “They were not the Templars .. and there is no connection whatever with the Freemasons; the Hospitallers were wholly devoted to healing and care.” They are seeking to combat its secretive image – due to the fact ‘Its membership was drawn exclusively from Europe’s aristocracy, which led conspiracy theorists to accuse it of being part of the “Illuminati”, a cabal of nobles bent on controlling the world.’ (No kidding.)
Following Napoleon’s dismantling of the Knights of Malta (Napoleon saw such organizations, whether Catholic or Protestant-breakaway ones, as potentially subsersive), some overseas French Knights founded The Venerable Order of Saint John, who organized the St. John Ambulance volunteer first-aid corps. The English Hospitallers are now raising their historical profile. Like the Temple Church, the English Hospitallers’ head church, part of the Priory Of St John Of Jerusalem in Clerkenwell, east London, was a replica of the round Church Of The Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem – in fact larger than the Templar replica. After losing it in 1541, the Hospitallers got the site back in 1874, “and from here in 1877 they began the modern St John’s Ambulance Service.” However it was so damaged by WWII bombing only remnants remain, but after restoration parts of it, including the crypt, are being opened to the public, as part of their museum refurbishment for the 2012 London Olympics [no website yet]. One religion-historian told The Guardian if a powerful cabal was to surface claiming to represent the original Order gone underground in 1312, and gained Papal recognition, they might sue the Church for the return of their “lost” property, such as these London sites, now worth billions.
Also on the anniversary front, it was exactly a century ago, in 1908, that a tomb was found which may have been that of England’s last known Templar. This is a less well-known episode in Templar history, which I researched myself as a mystery local to where I live, putting my findings online – ‘On The Trail Of England’s Last Templar’ [read feature]
Nonfiction Books & DVDs
There have of course been many nonfiction as well as fiction books about the Templars [Amazon-UK link to current books listing]. Templar “secrets” are currently of the genre classed as alternative or secret history, specifically matters covered up by the Church (as alleged in The Da Vinci Code). With all this being marketed as “true” or nonfiction (or at least was not overtly fiction), i.e. with the extra appeal of factuality (which The Da Vinci Code tried with mixed success to capture with its “Fact” prologue and historical lectures built into the dialogue between chases and murders). Sensational claims regarding history are quickly adopted by mainstream fiction and drama, where they have more license.
However, the nonfiction conspiracy-theory books have been giving thriller writers a run for their money, for they often have much of the same appeal as a thriller novel, with a grand narrative of secret history being uncovered, which includes behind-the-scenes narrative of how the authors stumble over various clues as they work to penetrate the veil of secrecy thrown up by sinister forces. In the case of the Templar-conspiracy genre, the speculative thesis is that the Templar Order was destroyed because in Jerusalem it had found secret documents and relics (such as the Shroud) which would rewrite church history if they became public; but that after 1307 it continued its secret traditions underground, with some becoming the first Freemasons. Nonfiction explorations have now branched out to include DVDs, often interviewing the authors of speculative-alternative or academic nonfiction books in support of their thesis [Amazon-UK link to current DVDs listing].
To feed this ongoing grand narrative of great secrets and wide-ranging conspiracy, these books are building up a mythos based on earlier such speculative claims – just as Dan Brown admitted in court. In the 2006 copyright infringement action brought against him by two Holy Blood, Holy Grail co-authors, his defense was in part he got his similar material from half a dozen other nonfiction works, which he listed – all of which in fact were follow-ons to 1982’s HBHG. HBHG was the first work to really popularise the idea the Grail secret, kept by the Templars, was a sacred bloodline. Of course film and literary narrative techniques have been converging since at least the 1970s. (For details, see my 2005 essay on the development of the ‘film friendly’ novel – “The Da Vinci Formula: The Da Vinci Code’s Formula For Success”
Any of the nonfiction books I’ve seen are better researched than The Da Vinci Code, which at least prompted many people to start reading nonfiction. And I don’t mean to damn the entire genre of speculative nonfiction works as a house of cards – for a list I put together in 2006 of 50 nonfiction books and 50 documentaries of interest, on the Templars, ‘holy-blood’ claims, Da Vinci Code debunkings, Grail research etc, see here .
This one is definitely set to run and run.
A closeup of 2 Templar effigies
